Welcome to my Football Manager Blog, the main purpose of this blog is to provide updates on the status of my Football Manager Skins & Guides Website

If you have any questions or queries then I can generally be found in the Skinning Forum at the Official Sports Interactive Forums, though I'd ask you to open a new thread rather than sending me a message.

To help with navigation I have included indexes of my content for the last few versions of Football Manager in the tabs below.

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Football Manager 2016 Patch 16.2 Released


Today saw the release of Patch 16.2 for Football Manager 2016 which is the second main patch for FM16 and fixes various issues.

However the patch may cause the game to crash when pressing continue if you are using one of a number of custom skins (the problem doesn't affect the Base Skins or any of my other Mods).

 To fix the problem:

- End users if you don't want to wait for the skinner to release an updated version of the skin then just delete the 'game processing panel.xml' file located in the panels\game folder for the skin you are using (or follow the instructions below to alter the problem line in that file). Then in preferences turn off the skin cache if it is on and reload your skin and the game should stop crashing.

- For skinners you will need to redo any changes you made to the default 'game processing panel.xml' file in the file that was updated by the patch (note the updated file is located in the main panels.fmf file not one found in the updates folder), though you really should be checking and updating all of your xml files for any changes made in the patch.

Looks like the following line in that file has been changed from:

<record id="widget_properties" class="calendar_detailed_event_panel" file="game/calendar dropdown event panel" show_no_events_label="false" width="200">


To:

<record id="widget_properties" class="calendar_popup_day_panel" file="game/calendar dropdown day panel" show_no_events_label="false" width="200"> 

Updating the class and file values on that line to their post-patch versions should solve the crashing problem.

However this will only fix the problem with the game crashing when it tries to process time, if your skin or game is crashing in other places or has other problems post-patch then if you are an end user first try manually deleting your cache files (if you do not now how to do this please see this thread and look under the How To Section for your OS) if that doesn't work then you'll need to wait for the skinner to release an updated version of the skin. 

If you are a skinner than as normal you will need to check each of the files you have included in your skin (which is why you should really only include files you have modified in your skins) to see if they were updated by the patch and then update your files so they reflect the changes made in the patch.

Wednesday 9 December 2015

FM16 MOD - Kit Titlebar Colours Mod


Football Manager 2016 introduced a new method of recolouring the titlebar, which simplfied the code and made it possible to recolour more of the skin, however one of the other things this new method did was apply a contrast check to the colours to make them more readable, however some people prefer the teams to use their original proper kit colours in the titlebar.

This is what this mod does it replaces the new contrast checking recolouring code with the old style pure recolouring code.

Note: Whilst this mod removes the contrast check which will result in the colours of some teams changing, it won't set all teams to their 'real' colours it will only set them to the colours declared in the database, so whilst it will change the shade of blue used for Barcelona it won't set their text colour to red, as the database has them set to yellow.

However not all parts of the game support the old recolouring code so this isn't a perfect replacement, the two main areas the old code isn't supported on are:

- The Match Screens.
- The Actionbar text.

Screenshots
(Top part of image is default skin, bottom part this mod)




I've also tweaked the size of the back/forward arrows as in the default skin the back arrow is bigger, which doesn't look right when the recolouring has been removed from them.


 ---
Redistribution Terms
You are free to post this content to your website provided:
1. It is not sold or behind a paywall.
2. You don't advertise it as being exclusive to your website.
3. My username and blog address are included: http://michaeltmurrayuk.blogspot.co.uk/

Friday 4 December 2015

FM16 Guide - How To Recolour the Star Ratings


Like in previous versions it is possible to change either the appearance or the colour of the Star Ratings used in FM16, however the method to recolour them has changed in Football Manager 2016.


How to Recolour the Star Ratings

In Football Manager 2016 the colour of the star ratings is no longer set by the actual graphic, like the other skin graphics in the game the colours are now set by values declared in the settings file for the skin, the advantage of this is it makes it a whole lot easier and quicker to recolour the stars.

If you are using one of the Default Skins then you will first need to download and switch over to the relevant Base Skin.

Then inside the folder for the skin you are using should be a settings folder and inside this should be an xml file (ignore the one called config.xml the one you want will generally be called something like settings.xml, colours.xml or '<skin_name> settings.xml')

Now inside that xml file you want to locate the following lines of code:

<colour name="star rating senior" red="244" green="188" blue="0"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="183" green="188" blue="191"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="28" green="28" blue="29"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>

(Don't worry if these lines aren't present in the file for your skin as the skinner may not have included them, if that is the case just paste the above lines into the file).

These four lines of code control the colour fo the Star Ratings, the first line controls the Senior Star (Gold by default), the next line controls the Youth Star (Light Grey), the third line controls the Unknown Star (Black) and the final line controls the Empty Star (Dark Grey).

To adjust the colour you need to change the values for each component. Valid values range from 0 to 255, where 255,255,255 is white, 0,0,0 is black, 255,0,0 is red, 0,255,0 is green etc…

Next you need to know the RGB value of the colour you want, the easiest way to get this is from an image editing program. (Or you can use trial and error to get close to what you want, one thing I would suggest is avoid setting values to 255 as they can be a bit bright, using 248 or 240 tends to give a softer colour that looks better).

For example if you load up paint.net, and in the Colors panel at the bottom left click the more button to expand the panel and it will now show the RGB value of the selected colour and as you change the colour on the colour wheel you'll see the RGB values change.

Alternatively there is a colour picker included within the game – just go to Preferences -> Interface -> Skin Colours, then click on one of the existing colours and a colour selector pops up where you can select a colour and get its RGB value.

Then it is just a case of picking the colour values that you want.

Below I have included some example colours for you to use if you want.

To get these into the game all you need to do is to paste the following lines for the colour scheme you want to use into the settings file for your skin in place of the existing lines of code for the star ratings you want to replace, if the skin you are using doesn't already have a star rating colours set in the settings file then you can just paste these lines directly into the file.
NOTE: If you are using one of the default skins you will need to download and switch to the relevant Base Skin to change the star colours.

After you have pasted in the lines you want, load up the game and if you have the skin cache on turn it off from within the Preferences Menu and Reload your skin for the new colours to be read.


RED
<colour name="star rating senior" red="200" green="30" blue="40"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="220" green="175" blue="175"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="100" green="30" blue="40"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>


BLUE
<colour name="star rating senior" red="72" green="145" blue="220"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="175" green="192" blue="222"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="0" green="32" blue="114"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>


GREEN
<colour name="star rating senior" red="53" green="178" blue="96"/>
<colour name="star rating youth" red="175" green="220" blue="175"/>
<colour name="star rating unknown" red="0" green="73" blue="36"/>
<colour name="star rating empty" red="202" green="202" blue="202"/>


How To Change the Star Rating Images

NOTE: These instructions are for people who want to create their own new star images, if you are using a downloaded pack then follow the instructions included with them to install them.

Whilst the method to recolour the star ratings has changed it is still possible to replace the default stars with different images.

The first thing you will need to do is to extract the default Star Rating graphics which can be found in the following location within the skins.fmf file:

\skins\fm-widgets\graphics\icons\custom\star rating

Inside that folder will be three subfolders;

scouting - I don't think these are actually used any longer.

senior - controls the main star ratings. (also used for reputation stars).

youth - controls the youth star ratings.

Inside each of these folders you will notice several png graphics and an xml file for each of them.

The png files control the actual appearance of the stars and note that we no longer have images for each rating we just have one for each part, so for example a two star rating would use two full images and three empty ones, whilst a three star rating would use three full images and two empty images, when in the past you'd have had a unique image for the two star rating and another one for the three star rating.

The other thing to consider when making new star images is that you can only use the three colours (red, green and blue) used by the default files as the game will recolour these to the colours declared in the settings file.

By default the red colour is assigned to the known star, the green colour is assigned the unknown star and the blue is assigned to the empty star.

Regarding the xml files you shouldn't need to edit these as they just tell the game what colour names to assign the red/green/blue colours to, and whilst you can change what values these are assigned to it is best to just leave them assigned to the default values to save any confusion at a later date.
 
---
Redistribution Terms
You are free to post this content to your website provided:
1. It is not sold or behind a paywall.
2. You don't advertise it as being exclusive to your website.
3. My username and blog address are included: http://michaeltmurrayuk.blogspot.co.uk/

Thursday 3 December 2015

FM16 Guide - How To Customize Match Player Ratings Screens

 
Like in previous versions Football Manager 2016 allows you to customize what information is displayed on the various Player Rating screens shown on the Match Screens.

However the coding for this has changed slightly in FM16 so now is a good time to create a proper guide showing you how to edit these screens.